Randy walked through the door and stopped, astonished. The two front rooms of the Hernandez place looked like show windows in a Miami auction house. He counted three silver tea services, two chests of flat silver, three television sets, and was bewildered by a display of statuary, silver candelabra, expensive leather cases, empty crystal decanters, table lighters, chinaware. Gold-framed oils and watercolors, some fairly good, plastered one wall. Table clocks and wall clocks raised their hands and swore to different times. “Great God!” Randy said. “Have you people gone into the junk business?”
Rita laughed. “It’s not junk. It’s my investment.” Dan said, “How’s Pete, Rita?”
“I think he’s a little better. He’s not losing any more hair but he’s still weak.”
Dan was carrying his black bag. It held little except instruments now. He said, “I’ll go back and see him.”
Dan walked down the hall and Randy was alone with her. She offered him a cigarette. Her perfume opened the gates of memory-the movies in Orlando, the dinners and dancing at the hotel in Winter Park, the isolated motel south of Canaveral, the morning they found a secluded pocket behind the dunes and were buzzed by a light plane and how the pilot almost side slipped into the sea banking around for a second look, and most of all, his apartment. It seemed so long ago, as if it had happened while he was in college, before Korea, but it was not so long, a year only. He said, “Thanks, Rita. First real cigarette I’ve had in a long, long time. You must be getting along all right.”
She looked at the bottle. “You didn’t bring me a present, did you, Randy?” The corners of her mouth quivered, but she did not quite smile.
He remembered the evenings he had come to this house, a bottle beside him on the seat, and they had gone tooting off together; and the evenings he had brought bottles in gift pack ages, discreet gratuities for her brother; and the nights in the apartment, sharing a decanter drink for drink because she loved her liquor. He realized that this is what she intended he remember. She was expert at making him feel uncomfortable. He said, “No, Rita. Trade goods. I’ve been in Marines Park, trying to trade for coffee.”
“Don’t your new women like Scotch, Randy? I hear you’ve got two women in your house now. Which one are you sleeping with, Randy?”
Suddenly she was a stranger, and he looked upon her as such.
Examined thus, with detachment, she looked ridiculous, wearing high heels and costume jewelry with shorts and halter at this hour of the morning and in this time of troubles. Her darkling ivory skin, once so satiny, appeared dry and mottled. Her hair was dull and the luster in her eyes reflected only spiteful anger. She looked used and tired. He said, calmly, “You can take your claws out now. I don’t feel them. My skin’s tougher.”
She licked her lips. They were puffed and brown. “You’re tougher. You’re not the same Randy. I guess you’re growing up.” He changed the subject. “Where did you get all this stuff?” He looked around the room.
“Trading.”
“I never see you in Marines Park.”
“We don’t go there. They come to us. They know we still hold food. Even coffee.”
He knew she wanted the bottle. He knew she would trade coffee, but he would never again trade with her, for anything. He said:
“You said this was your investment. Do you think three television sets is a good investment when there isn’t any electricity?” “I’m looking ahead, Randy. This war isn’t going to last forever and when it’s over I’m going to have everything I never had before and plenty besides, maybe to sell. I was only a kid after the last big war but I remember how my dad had to pay through the nose for an old jalopy. Do you know what that Jag cost me?” She laughed. “A case of beans, three bottles of ketchup, and six cans of deviled ham. For a Jag! Say, as soon as things get back to normal those three TV sets will be worth their weight in gold.”
“Do you really think things are going to get back to normal?”
“Sure! They always have, haven’t they? It may be a year, even two. I can wait. You look at those big new houses out on River Road. What built half of them? Wars. Profits out of wars. This time I’m going to get mine.”
He saw that she believed it and it was pointless to argue with her. Still, he was intrigued. “Don’t you realize that this war is different?”
She held out her left hand so that the sunlight glinted on the ring on her second finger. “It certainly is different! Look at this!” He looked at the big stone, and into it, and a thousand blue and red lights attested to its worth and purity.
It wasn’t costume jewelry, as he had surmised. It wasn’t glass surrounded by green paste. It was a diamond set in emeralds. “Where did you get it?” he asked, awed, an then he looked at her crescent ear clips and saw that they too, beyond a doubt, were diamonds.
Rita held the ring out, turning her wrist. She did not answer at once. She was enjoying their reaction. “Six carats,” she said. “Perfect.” She slipped it from her finger and handed it to Randy.
He took it automatically but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at her finger. Her finger was marred by a dark, almost black circle, as if the ring were tarnished brass, or its inside sooty. But the ring was clean bright white gold.
Dan came into the room, pawing in his bag and frowning. “I don’t know exactly-” he began, looked at Randy’s face, and failed to finish the sentence.
Frowning, Rita inspected the dark band. “It itches,” she said, and scratched. A bit of blackened skin flaked away, leaving raw flesh beneath.
“I asked you where you got this, Rita,” Randy said, a command.
Before she opened her mouth he guessed the answer. She said, “Porky Logan.”
The ring dropped to the floor, bounced, tinkled, and came to rest on the corner of a blue silk Chinese rug.
“Say, what’s the matter?” she said. “You act like it was hot!” “I think it is hot,” Randy said.
“Well, if you think Porky stole it, you’re wrong. It was abandoned property. Anybody would take it.”
Dan took her hand and adjusted his bifocals so he could examine the finger closely. He spoke, his voice deep, enforcing calm. “Hold still, Rita, I just want to see that finger. I think what Randy meant was that the ring has been exposed to radioactivity and is now radioactive itself. I’m afraid he’s right. This looks like a burn-a radium burn. How long have you been wearing that ring?”
“Off and on, for a month I guess. I never wear it outside, only in the house.” She hesitated. “But this last week, I’ve had it on all the time. I never noticed-”
They looked down at it, its facets blinking at them from the soft blue silk as if it were in a display window. It looked beautiful. “Where did Porky get it, Rita?” Dan asked.
“Well, I only know what he told me. He was fishing in the Keys on The Day and of course he started right back. He’s smart, Porky is. He made a big detour around Miami. Well, he was pass ing through Hollywood or Boca Raton or one of those Gold Coast places and it was empty and right off the main drag he saw one of those swanky little jewelry shops, you know, a branch of some Fifth Avenue store and its windows were blown out. He said stuff was lying all over, rings and pins and watches and bracelets, like popcorn out of a busted bag. So he gathered it up. Then he dumped the hooks and plugs and junk out of his fishbox and went inside and filled it up. Porky said right then he was thinking of the future. He figured that money wouldn’t be worth anything but diamonds and gold were different. They never lost value no matter what happened.”